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10 SEO Plugins for DRUPAL 7
9
Aug
Aug
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is getting more and more importance during the past years and this is not very surprising!
Considering that many companies are now expanding their business to the online field, especially in the e-commerce industry, the competition to reach the first page of the search engine result pages is becoming tougher every month.
The solution to this well-known problem? SEO. Of course, you will have better results in the SERPs if your website is SEO friendly since its conception but if you have been missing this part for your website you can still increase your rankings. Here are the major SEO plugins for Drupal 7:
1. Pathauto
The Pathauto plugin automatically generates URL/path aliases for different types of content (nodes, taxonomy terms, users) and the best part of this module comes from the fact that you don’t need to specify the path alias.
Then you will be allowed to have clean URL aliases such as /category/my-node-title instead of /node/4584. The aliases are based upon a "pattern" system that uses tokens which the administrator can change easily.
2. Google analytics
The Google Analytics module allows you to directly follow your incoming traffic statistics into the back office of your website. The module allows you to add the following statistics features to your Drupal site:
- Single/multi/cross domain tracking
- Selectively track/exclude certain users, roles and pages
- Monitor what type of links are tracked (downloads, outgoing and mailto)
- Monitor what files are downloaded from your pages
- Custom variables support with tokens
- Custom code snippets
- Site Search support
- AdSense support
- Tracking of Goals
- Anonymise visitors IP address
- Cache the Google Analytics code on your local server for improved page loading times
- Access denied (403) and Page not found (404) tracking
- DoNotTrack support (non-cached content only)
3. XML Sitemap
Sitemap is a tiny file located inside the root directory of your web server and is always an excellent way to get the robots crawlers to know where your content is located. You can change the settings in the administrative panel if you want to modify the priority rules and which pages are the most important to send to the major search engines.
Submitting a sitemap to Google, Bing and Yahoo will indicate the crawlers where to find your webpages on your site, before they decide to do it by themselves. This ensures a faster indexing of your site, resulting in quicker rankings.
4. Page Title
With the basic installation of Drupal, you don’t have the control over the page title configuration and the way it’s displayed.
Page Title is a very useful and powerful module which allows you to customize each and every page titles of your website. You can easily change the titles of content pages, basic pages, blogs and articles to optimize your SEO.
Setting up the page title is the main factor to be considered if you want to optimize your website with the SEO practices. The page title is the first thing that web crawlers browse
5. Global Redirect
A helpful SEO-based module that helps Drupal to not have duplicate URLs so that your site isn’t penalized by search engines. Global Redirect does the following action on your Drupal installation:
- Checks the current URL for an alias and does a 301 redirect to it if it is not being used.
- Checks the current URL for a trailing slash, removes it if present and repeats check 1 with the new request.
-
Checks if the current URL is the same as the
site_frontpageand redirects to the frontpage if there is a match. - Checks if the Clean URLs feature is enabled and then checks the current URL is being accessed using the clean method rather than the 'unclean' method.
- Checks access to the URL. If the user does not have access to the path, then no redirects are done. This helps avoid exposing private aliased node's.
- Make sure the case of the URL being accessed is the same as the one set by the author/administrator. For example, if you set the alias "articles/cake-making" to node/123, then the user can access the alias with any combination of case.
-
Most of the above options are configurable in the settings page. In Drupal 5 you can access this after enabling the
globalredirect_adminmodule. In Drupal 6, the settings page is bundled into the module.
Once enabled, an alias provides a nice clean URL for a path on a site. However Drupal does not remove the old path (eg node/1234). The problem is that you now have two URLs representing the same content. This is dangerous territory for duplicate pages which can get you sandboxed by the search engines!
6. SEO Checklist
The SEO Checklist module provides an updated list of recommended modules and SEO best practices for your Drupal based website. It is presented as a to-do list and presents each task into several points like Title tags, paths and content. The appropriate module is displayed next to each task with a short presentation and a description so you can easily set up the module.
The plugin also tracks the task done, includes several information such as a tag, date and provides a simple report.
7. Search 404
Most of your visitors will type the right URL when they want to visit your website but sometimes few of them will write your URL with one or more mistakes, in this case the classical 404 page will be displayed.
With the Search 404 module you can avoid this issue as the plugin will run a search with the wrong parameter provided in the url and then display a list of the closest matches. This is a very useful plugin as it makes your website much more user friendly.
8. Meta Tags Quick
This module is a must have for every website owner or SEO specialist who cares a bit about his website’s ranking. With the Meta Tags Quick, you can easily add and customize your meta tag descriptions and meta keywords to all your different nodes. All of the meta tags (keyword, description, copyright) is treated as a separate field.
9. SEO Compliance checker
The SEO Compliance Checker checks node content on search engine optimization upon its creation or modification. Each time one node is edited or published the module performs some checks and provides the user a feedback on the compliance of the rules. It introduces a hook to gather information about existing SEO checks in the other modules.
10. Content Optimizer
The Content Optimizer module helps to increase your site’s search engine (e.g. Google) rankings by improving the on-page optimization variables and insuring your content is conform with Drupal SEO best practices. The SEO analyzer provides instant analysis of any site content to assure SEO best practices are consistently followed. The analysis displays vital content statistics and recommendations for improving search engine rankings.
See also:
New Version of Drupal to Integrate Symfony Framework
7
Jun
Jun
Dries Buytaert, the founder of the Drupal CMS, recently announced the launch of the French branch of the commercial open-source software company he co-founded in 2007. He also unveiled some features of Drupal 8, the new version of the CMS that should be released next year.
Drupal Gets Closer to Symfony Framework
Following his interview given to journaldunet.com, Dries revealed that the new version of Drupal would be more cloud-friendly and natively integrated with the PHP framework named Symfony.
The Symfony framework is built around independent modules which can be activated at any given time without needing to interact with each other.
This allows the website to better handle its workload and use its resources more efficiently.
Improve Mobile Experience
Moreover, the development team is focusing on providing a better mobile experience through using responsive tools offered by the HTML 5 standards. This was to be expected as more and more people are now reaching websites via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
In this new version, you won’t need to include special modules to allow visitors to browse websites, unlike in version 7.
Multi Language Support
Last but not least, the team has also confirmed that the Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative (D8MI) will help web developers to easily build websites in several languages.
This will allow content managers to easily switch from one language to another. Drupal 8 is expected to be released in August 2013.
Read more about our Drupal development services.
Drupal Shanghai Meetup
6
Feb
Feb
The Shanghai Drupal User Group organizes a meetup in Shanghai on February 8 from 7pm to 9pm.
Drupal meetups are open to anyone interested in discussing about the worldwide well-known free and open-source CMS (Content Management System).
The idea is to share knowledge and experience about Drupal and build a larger community in China.
The event will be divided into 4 parts: an introduction, a few lighting rounds (short topics), 2 presentations (including Commerce Alipay integration), and a networking session (job openings, open-discussions, etc.).
Further meetups will follow on the Wednesday evening of every month.
More info & registration: http://groups.drupal.org/node/206793
Drupal in brief:
- Created in 2001 by Dries Buytaert
- 1% of all websites in the world are powered by Drupal
- 14,000+ modules available to add features to your website
- 1,400+ themes available to customize your website appearance (check out our articles about free Drupal 7 themes and E-commerce Drupal themes)
- 15,000+ developers use Drupal (including ours!).
14 Ecommerce Drupal Themes
20
Oct
Oct
Here we come back about web design with more Drupal themes, and this time we focus on ecommerce!
Most of the shopping templates below are compatible with Drupal 6 and a few ones with Drupal 7.
However, all are optimized for Ubercart. Ubercart is a Drupal module that unlocks the power of ecommerce functionalities, from inventory, payment to reporting tools.
Here are 14 Ecommerce Drupal themes ranked by alphabetical order:
Acquia Prosper is a classic free ecommerce Drupal theme created by TopNotchThemes. With a monochromatic look and clean lines, it is designed as an Ubercart e-commerce theme that is easy to customize, but is also extremely flexible for any type of website. Acquia Prosper is compatible with Drupal 6 & 7.
Also designed by TopNotchThemes, Clean Commerce is a premium shopping Drupal theme. With minimalist and monochromatic design, it is an Ubercart-optimized theme. Clean Commerce is currently only available for Drupal 6.
Ecommerce Pro is a professional premium Drupal theme. The theme can be customized. For instance, you can choose 5 theme colors among blue, red, orange, pink, and green, and customize the front page slider, as well as a dropdown product image gallery. Designed by Themesnap, Ecommerce Pro is compatible with Drupal 7.
Designed by DrupalStyle, Frame Ecommerce is a beautiful free Drupal shopping theme with clean and contemporary look. It is optimized for Ubercart and compatible with Drupal 6.
5. Inci
Inci is a premium ecommerce Drupal theme designed by SymphonyThemes. It is compatible with Ubercart and Drupal 6.
6. Luxe
Created by TopNotchThemes, Luxe is an elegant premium shopping Drupal 6 theme.
7. Market Share
Also designed by TopNotchThemes, Market Share is a corporate ecommerce Drupal Theme. Many possibilities to customize this theme compatible with Drupal 6.
Modern Ecommerce is a free shopping theme for Drupal 6 with clean layout and powerful features.
Pump up the Volume is a dark Drupal 6 theme optimized for Ubercart by TopNotchThemes.
10. Seashell
Designed by ThemesShark, Seashell is an original ecommerce Drupal theme compatible with 6.x.
11. Sharp Sales
Sharp Sales is a shopping Drupal theme with a classic look and compatible with Drupal 6.
12. Shoppica
Designed by Themesnap, Shoppica is a beautiful ecommerce Drupal theme compatible with 7.x. It notably features unlimited color combinations.
13. Tech Stop
Tech Stop is a professional shopping Drupal theme by TopNotchThemes compatible with 6.x.
Designed by DrupalStyle, Traffic Ecommerce is a free Drupal theme with a very catchy design.
If you want other Drupal themes, please read our previous blog posts about 25 Free Drupal 7 themes and where to download best Drupal themes.
25 Free Drupal 7 Themes
22
Sep
Sep
At our web agency THEM, we love Drupal. And we are actually not the only ones in the world to love it: 670,000+ people are part of the community, and thousands of websites worldwide are powered by Drupal.
Drupal may be not as popular as the two other major open source web Content Management Systems (CMS), namely WordPress and Joomla, but it is undoubtedly one of the most powerful. It can suit any kind of website, from corporate website to e-commerce platform.
Not only is Drupal easy to maintain and flexible to future evolutions, the platform is also very SEO-friendly (read how important SEO is for your online business).
Another great advantage of Drupal is the way web design can be easily modified. In only one click, you can totally change the look of your website by using templates.
Here are 25 free themes compatible with Drupal 7 ranked by alphabetical order (click on titles to visit project's page):
Acquia Marina is a very popular Drupal 7 theme for businesses that is easy to customize. It is developed by TopNotchThemes in partnership with Acquia.
Also developed by TopNotchThemes, Acquia Propser is an Ubercart e-commerce theme with great look and clean lines.
3. Alphorn
Originally available for Drupal 6, Alphorn is now compatible with Drupal 7. It now supports displaying in mobile devices, including tablets. Alphorn is developed by SymphonyThemes.
4. Analytic
Designed and developed by Pixeljets, Analytic is a clean, modern and free theme, ideal for blogs, online media and communities.
5. Blue Masters
Originally based on a PSD template designed by Wendell Fernandes, Blue Masters is a beautiful Drupal template supported by More than Themes.
6. Busy
Busy is a simple and clean theme for companies only available for Drupal 7, and sponsored by Undpaul.
7. Colourise
Based on the work from Erwin Aligam, Colourise is a dark theme aimed at online communities.
8. Conch
Conch is a free theme with a vintage style. Like Alphorn, it is developed by Symphony Themes and suits any screen, from mobile devices to desktop computers.
9. Corolla
Corolla is an awesome and very popular theme among Drupal community. Highly stylized colorable, it allows you to totally customize the look and feel of your website.
10. Corporate Clean
Corporate Clean is one of my favorite themes for Drupal with simple, clean and professional web design. I especially like the slideshow with the call-to-action buttons. Based on a PSD template designed by Zsolt Kacso, Corporate Clean is now supported by More than Themes.
11. Crystalline
Released a few months ago, Crystalline is a transparent theme that allows you to easily customize the style. Crystalline is sponsored by Rocket Theme.
12. Danland
Danland is an elegant theme for Drupal 7.x with an image slideshow (the feature can be switched off). This free theme is provided by Danetsoft.
13. Jackson
The Jackson Theme is an extremely professionally designed theme. Its great layout is perfect for SMS businesses.
14. Koi
Originally designed for WordPress by Nick La, Koi is an elegant free Drupal theme for online communities.
15. Libra
Libra’s clean design consists of blue sky colors reminding us the colors used by Twitter. It is designed by Glidea Web Agency and Drupal Soul, and only available for Drupal 7.
16. Marinelli
Marinelli is one of the most famous Drupal theme. It features a 3 column and tableless layout.
17. MD Construction
MD Construction is an original under construction theme for Drupal. Very useful when you modify something in your website.
18. Newswire
Newswire is a 4 column, table-less, and fixed width theme for Drupal. It offers many color options for the navigation bar and other blocks.
19. Omega
Omega Drupal theme is a powerful HTML5/960 grid base theme that is highly configurable. Thousands of websites use it as their design theme. A few other themes are based on Omega.
20. Pixture Reloaded
Pixture Reloaded is a re-colorable theme powered by Adaptivetheme. It has great features such as mobile support, powerful layout engine and many more.
21. Sky
Similar to Pixture Reloaded, Sky is a center aligned theme with multi-column layout theme and some configurable color options.
22. Titan
Originally designed on WordPress by Drew Strojny, Titan is a free, classic, and efficient theme for Drupal 7.
23. Typebased
Typebased is a modern and relecorable blog theme. Original WordPress theme was designed by WooThemes.
24. Urban Solice
Urban Solice is a professionally designed and well-organized Drupal 7 theme. Its neutral color scheme and clean layout make it an ideal theme for small or medium-sized businesses.
25. Zero point
Zero Point is an advanced and clear theme developed by Dr. Radut to be ideal for a wide range of websites.
Which one is your favorite? If you want to see more Drupal themes, you may be interested in reading our previous article on where to download the best Drupal templates.
Open Source CMS Market
16
Dec
Dec
What are the most used open source CMS used worldwide ?
According to a recent study by web consultancy firm Water&Stone conducted on 4,000 users, WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal were leading the open source CMS market in 2010.
The analysis focuses on several metrics such as rate of adoption and brand strength among 20 open source CMS .
For example, the study shows the systems that see the most downloads. Here is the top 10:
| WordPress | 983,625 |
| Joomla! | 113,836 |
| Drupal | 33,671 |
| DotNetNuke | 13,000 |
| CMSMadeSimple | 9,948 |
| Liferay | 9,435 |
| TYPO3 | 7,461 |
| eZ Publish | 7,031 |
| Alfresco | 7,000 |
| Umbraco | 5,420 |
Source : Water&Stone
Moreover, trends on Google Insights for search highlights the variation of web searches related to WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal over the last 12 months:
Clearly, users have more interest in WordPress, followed by Joomla! and Drupal.
In addition to those three systems based on PHP, the study highlights two tools, namely DoteNetNuke and Umbraco, that use .NET, as well as three JAVA CMS, namely Liferay and Alfresco.
China SEO and Web Development Job
8
Nov
Nov
THEM Beijing Web Design and SEO is Growing, and we have open positions. Send your RESUME/CV to this email : jobs(at)them.pro
Keywords: SEO, SEM, Search Engine, Social Media, Drupal, Php
- Designation: SEO / SEM / Development professional
- Location: Chaoyang District, Beijing (Gongrentiyuchang North Road)
Compensation: to be discussed
- Education:
UG - B.Sc - Any Specialization, Computers,B.Tech/B.E. - Any Specialization,BCA - Computers,Other Graduate - Any Specialization
PG - Post Graduation
- Industry Type: IT-Software/ Software Services
Functional Area: E-Commerce, Drupal, PHP, Internet Technologies
Job Description:
We are looking for interested computer science professionals who have some SEO/SEM or Drupal exposure to join us. You will be collaborating on several search engine optimization and web development projects.
Desired Candidate Profile:
- Computer Science Background
- fluent English or French, Chinese a Plus.
- You program in PHP / HTML / CSS / Ajax / Mysql.
Company Profile:
THEM is a Web development company specializing in creating high traffic and search engine friendly sites/e-business. We focus on Drupal and Search Engine Optimization to build powerful websites for our clients.
Send your RESUME/CV to this email : jobs(at)them.pro
Drupal is used for at least 1% of all websites wordwide
29
Jul
Jul
In an interview for the French newspaper Le Monde, Drupal's founder Dries Buytaert claims that the CMS is used for at least 1% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to larger corportate sites.
What is Drupal?
Founded in 2001, Drupal is a free and open source CMS (Content Management System) written in PHP. It's used as back-end systems for all kind of websites, such as blogs, corporate and political sites.
According to Dries Buytaert, more than 1% of all websites worldwide use Drupal, the most famous one being the site for the White House (whitehouse.gov).
Drupal's strength: modules
The main advantage of Drupal is the usage of modules. They enable webmasters to add new functionalities to their site.
There are currently almost 6,000 free third-party community-contributed modules available for download in order to add new features or customize Drupal's appearance. By the way, you can read our article about the top sites where to download Drupal themes.
However, Drupal may be difficult for beginners, notably compared to other blog-oriented CMSs like Joomla! or WordPress. But Drupal offers more possibilities to build complex websites.
Drupal 7 to be released
Many efforts have been made to make the next version of Drupal (Drupal 7) easier to use. It's expected to be released in the following months.
The problem is that there will be many changes between the latest version (Drupal 6) and the new version, notably regarding the API. Modules will have to be updated, so it may take some time before all of the modules will be compatible with the new version.
In 2007, Dries Buytaert founded a company called Acquia that provides products, services and support for Drupal. As you know, we're also big fans of Drupal within THEM. Check out our web development services as well as our web design services.
Drupal themes: top websites to download templates
31
May
May
In this post, you'll be able to find a collection of websites offering free and premium Drupal themes that can be downloaded and used as templates for your Drupal powered website.
Drupal is a free and open source Content Management System (CMS) largely used from small personal blogs to large corporate sites. It is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.
Themes allow you to change the look and feel of your Drupal site. These contributed themes are not part of any official release and may not work correctly. You have to use matching versions of themes with Drupal. For example, themes released for Drupal 5.x will not work for Drupal 6.x.
Free Drupal themes
You can find below a collection of websites offering free Drupal templates:
- Drupal's official website, hundreds of contributed themes are available for download. You can search for themes and filter by compatibility (from 4.7.x to 7.x). Each theme is well documented (features, developers, versions, etc.).
- 120 Free Essential Drupal 6.x Themes by tripwire magazine : collection of themes organized in 5 categories (flexible multi-column, 1-column, 2-column, 3-column and 4-column themes).
- CSS Galleries: Free Web Designs for Download posted by ramiro on SEO Expert blog (consists of a large collection of free CMS templates, including Drupal's).
- Drupal-theme, dozens of themes can be downloaded from the website. Useful themes categories : version, number of columns, corporate, blog, etc.
- Drupalthemes, website where users can submit their Drupal theme and rate the others. If you look for templates, you can filter by version, number of columns and color.
- Themebot, more than 100 Drupal templates available for download.
- Drupal2u, more than 230 Drupal templates, possibility to filter by version, number of colums, color, category, etc.
- SiteGround, a few Drupal themes (various templates for preview and download)
Premium Drupal themes
For those who are willing to pay for theme custom development, some websites offer premium Drupal templates:
- Templates Hunt, almost 500 Drupal themes offered on the website. You can pay a regular price or a unique price (meaning you're the last one who can download the template).
- WooThemes, only 2 Drupal themes available. One (Bueno) is nevertheless free.
- Themesnap, a few but very well design themes. The sites announces one or two new premium Drupal templates per month.
Showcase Drupal powered websites
Among the websites showcasing Drupal powered websites, I'd like to mention:
- Drupal Museum, gathering artfully designed websites.
- Drupalbased, offering hundreds of examples that can be filtered by category.
- CMS Showcase: 31 Remarkable Drupal Powered Websites, from personal blogs to fully-featured business websites, posted by Jacob Gube:
Besides, Drupal Worx offers an interesting tutorial about how views theming is done.
Drupal Cheat Sheet in Chinese
30
Nov
Nov
We have some new for you. We uploaded the drupal cheat sheet, that every drupal developer should have, except we translated it into chinese, so that the chinese open source community and the chinese drupal programers can also use it for their everyday drupal developments.
You can access the drupal chinese cheat sheet here
don't forget to bookmark the page if you think you might need this pdf later.
enjoy... and thank to matt vance
